


closer than the wound

by susiecarter



Category: Warcraft (2016)
Genre: Doppelganger, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extra Treat, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Psychological Torture, Self-Sacrifice, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 09:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21492187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Lothar misliked this.He had misliked it from the beginning, from the moment he had first understood what it was Taria hoped to accomplish. And time and circumstance had done nothing to ease his mind.He exchanged a level glance with Khadgar across the table. If nothing else, it was at least some small cold comfort that Khadgar should meet his eyes in such a steady, speaking way—that Khadgar understood why Lothar looked at him thus, and looked back at him the same way, and was understood by Lothar in turn. The more precious, even, for being the only comfort to hand in the vast feast-hall of King Perenolde.(Or: Khadgar and Lothar are sent to parlay with an independent kingdom, and betrayed; but Lothar's subsequent torture isn't just a matter of his own pain, in more ways than one.)
Relationships: Khadgar/Anduin Lothar
Comments: 18
Kudos: 86
Collections: Happy Belated Treatmas 2019





	closer than the wound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/pseuds/days4daisy) in the [happy_belated_treatmas_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/happy_belated_treatmas_2019) collection. 

> Your Darkest Night prompts from 2017 for Warcraft were just TOTALLY IRRESISTIBLE, h e l p—so hopefully you'll enjoy this mishmash of a few of my favorites, days4daisy, and happy Treatmas. :D ♥
> 
> This is wildly self-indulgent and whumpy, but IMO manages to steer clear of genuinely graphic descriptions/depictions of violence and injury, though it does linger over their being experienced. Alterac and King Perenolde are borrowed from non-movieverse Warcraft canon, but you don't need to know anything more about them than appears in the fic to understand the story.

_... drawn like the wound,_  
_come no closer—the wound is closer than you._  
_Don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful,_  
_and the wound has passed by that enchantment_  
_cast by your eyes ..._

—from "[The Wound](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149489/the-wound-5c897d521b00f)" by Adonis

Lothar misliked this.

He had misliked it from the beginning, from the moment he had first understood what it was Taria hoped to accomplish. And time and circumstance had done nothing to ease his mind.

He exchanged a level glance with Khadgar across the table. If nothing else, it was at least some small cold comfort that Khadgar should meet his eyes in such a steady, speaking way—that Khadgar understood why Lothar looked at him thus, and looked back at him the same way, and was understood by Lothar in turn. The more precious, even, for being the only comfort to hand in the vast feast-hall of King Perenolde.

He hadn't wanted to come at all. But he'd wanted even less for Khadgar to go in other company—or, worse still, alone.

And it had to be Khadgar, apparently. Perenolde's couriers had never said as much, not quite; but the tone of Perenolde's communications had altered unmistakably, in discussing _the hero who had saved Stormwind, and perhaps all Azeroth likewise, from the diabolical machinations of the traitor Medivh_—

That had been enough in itself to set Lothar's heart against this. Who was Perenolde, king of Alterac or no, to say such a thing? He hadn't been there. He hadn't—hadn't seen the dread creature that had been _within_ Medivh, hadn't gazed upon its terrible face. He hadn't felt the sheer suffocating power of its presence; and Medivh had fought it, of that Lothar remained sure. Medivh had fought it, for them, and striven to contain it, and it pained Lothar even now to imagine what it might have cost him to do it—to hold fast, in whatever critical instant there had been, and let Khadgar burn the Fel away, surely knowing full well he would die of it.

No, Lothar had no goodwill in his heart for a man who would stand at a distance from a battle, and pass judgment on one who had been lost forever in the thick of it.

And if he were any judge of the look on Khadgar's face when he had heard that particular missive read, Khadgar had even less patience for it than he.

But it had taken a great deal of time and effort and care for Perenolde to agree that he would hear envoys from Stormwind at all. Which Lothar _also_ misliked—what use the hand of friendship, if it belonged to an ass of a king who required such chivvying and coaxing and blandishment to condescend to extend it? Half of Stormwind aflame, and Llane dead and buried, and the army of another world at their doorstep; and still this man must be _convinced_ of the merits of alliance? Surely they were better off without him, and always would be, even if the Horde had all their heads on pikes within a year.

Nevertheless—Perenolde had agreed at last, and to alter any of the conditions that had resulted in that agreement would be to reduce it all to ash and force the whole matter to be built again from the foundation. From lower, even, for Perenolde seemed the sort who might treat such a thing as deliberate insult.

And they must try. Taria had been firm, unwavering, on that point. She'd always been the more skilled between the two of them at extending courtesy where others might perceive it as undeserved; and it mattered a great deal to her, Lothar knew, that this war shouldn't be treated as grounds to abandon the principles upon which the current members of the Alliance had been united. She wished to count Alterac among their number not only for Stormwind's sake, but for Alterac's, that they might not one day find themselves left facing the Horde alone. That was the way her mind worked—that was the way her heart worked.

Lothar would do worse for a queen like her than bow to Aiden Perenolde.

So: they would go. For it must be Khadgar, and therefore it would be Lothar also.

But Lothar had never promised to like it.

And he hadn't, not one bit of it. He hadn't liked the long, winding, mountainous way to the capital, ripe for ambush from the crevices of every rocky slope; he hadn't liked the screaming wind, the cold that cut so cleanly to the bone, the dull overcast sky. He hadn't liked the welcome that had greeted them when they stood at last upon the stair before the royal keep itself—for he couldn't help but feel there was some uneasiness in the air, something unpleasant in the way the Alterais guards' eyes had kept shifting to his sword and then away again.

But they came under a banner of peace and goodwill. And surely, _surely_, even if Perenolde chose to stand alone after all, he wouldn't be so stupid as to set all the Alliance against him at once by doing them harm.

Then again, Lothar should perhaps have known better than to trust in anything so undeniably rare as good sense.

He felt like a madman, at first.

For surely it was mad to be wary of a toast to the success of their discussions, and to the health and strength of both their kingdoms. Traditional, and Lothar had known to expect it, and shouldn't have thought twice about it.

There was a tale centuries old, still told, about a faithless king who'd used this same ancient custom for ill, and poisoned those who'd come to parlay with him—and his queen, understanding what he'd done, had taken one of their cups and drunk from it herself, and the crown princess likewise. The king had gone mad alone and died, if Lothar remembered the rest of it rightly.

Nothing in the look of King Perenolde brought that tale to mind. He seemed quiet-spoken, thoughtful; a man who might indeed be naturally inclined to hesitance, Lothar began to think, and would require some inducement to be moved to action. His hair was graying: he was past the years of trusting mindlessly in his own strength, past a young man's blithe certainty that courage and a show of heart must win the day. It was not impossible that he shouldn't like to go to war unless he felt no other choice remained.

And yet, when Perenolde gave the toast and raised his cup, Lothar found himself slow to do likewise, forced to swallow down unbidden misgivings to make his throat ready for the wine. He told himself sternly that he mustn't be rash, that all he did here would reflect inevitably upon Taria as his queen; that if he were rude enough to refuse, to dash his cup to the floor, Perenolde would have cause to cast him from the hall at once.

He looked at Khadgar again, and wished too late that he could have thought of some excuse for Khadgar to refrain—or to touch the cups with his magic to be sure there was nothing amiss, though of course that would only give Perenolde equal reason to be suspicious of _them_.

And Khadgar looked back at him, clear-eyed, only the barest dip in his brow to show that he was puzzled.

But Lothar could hardly speak of his fears any more readily, here, surrounded by Perenolde's guard, than he could act on them. He was being foolish anyway, surely. He had no cause for such distrust. There was no reason why they shouldn't drink.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to nod approval or reassurance to Khadgar, not when it felt so irrationally like it would be a lie. He closed his eyes instead, closed his eyes and brought the cup to his lips and drank from it, and if his gut was unsettled within him he couldn't rightly blame the wine for it.

The taste wasn't amiss to his tongue. A little sweet; but he had heard that wine from the vineyards of the sunny southern foothills of Alterac was prized by some for just that.

One swallow. That was all that was required of him. He set the cup down after, and smiled thinly at Perenolde, and didn't touch it again.

But, as it turned out, one swallow was enough.

There were fires blazing high all round the hall. It was warm as a summer's day in here, for all that the mountain wind no doubt roared away outside. That had been true already, and remained so.

But something in the quality of that warmth began to change. It was too much; smothering, suffocating. Lothar felt weighed down by it, made heavy with it. Perenolde was speaking, and he knew he must attend, but the words were skittering past him, too quick to catch. His skin prickled. The fires leapt. His gaze was caught by the shapes of the flames, and he couldn't pry it free. He felt sick and slow and _dizzy_—

Too late, he gasped for breath as if he surfaced from deep water, and lurched clumsily up out of his chair. Khadgar had already faltered, hands pressed flat to the tabletop to support himself, swallowing hard; and his fingertips glittered blue, but he seemed unable to _use_ what power sputtered there, eyes already flickering shut.

"No," Lothar heard himself say, but his own voice seemed distant from him, impossibly far. His hands were numb; he reached for his sword without hesitation, but couldn't tell whether he found it, whether his fingers had closed upon it. All the world seemed to recede from him at once, and the last thing he saw before the dark closed in upon him was the face of Aiden Perenolde, pale and strained, chin high with a triumph that had no gladness in it.

He woke in chains.

At first he could hardly move. He had so long relied on his body, had always inhabited it to the fullest degree he knew how—but now it was a stranger to him, and held him fast within itself but wouldn't heed him. He lay limply against a cold stone wall, and his arms hung beside him but didn't touch the floor, and when at last he managed with a great concerted effort to twitch his toes, there was a scrape of metal, a little clank.

He breathed, and swallowed, and pried one endlessly heavy eyelid open, and the swimming blur before him resolved itself a bit at a time.

A dungeon. He had expected no less, but it was hardly a pleasure to be right. And—he twitched his toes again, and this time watched them move, grimly amused. His boots were gone.

Deliberate, of course, to take them from him. It would be rough going in the mountains without them. But surely there was someone in Perenolde's royal guard who was of a size with him. And he wouldn't find it a hardship to work his way through the rest until he found the lucky fellow.

He'd done some of his best work barefoot, after all.

He dragged his head up. It was unsteady on his neck, frustratingly so; but not so much he couldn't look round himself. And he'd already known it was too quiet. No voice had spoken to greet him, no chains rattled but his own. His breaths came harsh in his throat, and no one else's filled the thick silent gaps between them.

But still—still, something went cold in his chest, to see for certain that Khadgar was not with him.

He closed his eyes, bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, and bore the slow sick roil of his gut.

He should have had a plan. He should have thought it through—should have deliberately chosen, with the brass-bold fox-mad battle readiness so often attributed to Anduin Lothar, the words that might best accomplish his aim. Whether to provoke or to coax, and how to do it; to pretend concern or the lack of it, or land somewhere between.

But he—he couldn't. He couldn't hold himself at such a distance from it, hadn't the presence of mind for strategy. He was in chains, still more than halfway drugged; and his boots were gone; and Khadgar was gone, too, and that by far the hardest to bear, the least forgivable.

He felt his heart pressed tight in his chest, he couldn't breathe. He clanked his chains against the stone, in a burst of strength and purpose that left him nearly as soon as it had come, and when the din died down he found to his own dim surprise that he was shouting, hoarse cracked sounds scraping their way out of his throat, words it was no doubt unwise to say.

"—come _on_, you bastards! Where is he? What have you done with him? He's no good to you, you hear me?"

A blatant, foolish lie, of course. Really, Lothar thought dimly, it was a wonder he was even trying it. Khadgar was by far the more valuable of the two of them, whether alive and held captive—even uncooperative, if his power could be drained from him and given to another, or—or who knew what else; or—

Or dead. Lothar flinched to think of it; his chains rattled, his eyes stung. It was—it was only practical, to consider it. Because of course if Perenolde couldn't get whatever it was he wanted of Khadgar, it would still be of some natural benefit to eliminate him. To remove him from Taria's service, from the Alliance's arsenal, in all his stubbornness and cleverness, his blazing and undeniable power.

But the thought alone was—it singed, it _scalded_, it couldn't be borne. Lothar couldn't stand it. He gritted his teeth—shouted some more, harsh wild curses, and jerked in his chains; flung them and tugged at them with increasing strength and steadiness, as bit by bit his mind began to clear, and his body became his own again. He would make such a nuisance of himself that Perenolde would _have_ to send someone to him, even if only to slit his throat; and if he were lucky that moment's distraction would be all Khadgar needed.

"—me! All right? I know everything, _everything_—the queen herself is my sister. Don't waste your time on that runt of a—"

A clang. Lothar stilled, squinting through the dimness, pulse pounding hard in his throat. He leaned into the limits of his chains, craning away from the wall; that motion, that swinging shadow, that must surely be a door. A scrape of boot-soles against stone. Another shadow moving—taking shape as it drew nearer.

Someone had come after all.

And then they drew nearer still, and Lothar's breath caught.

"_Khadgar_," he said, wild with relief, alight with it. He hadn't even thought to hope—but then Khadgar had never been shy of surprising him, and if anything seemed to jump at every opportunity for it.

And now, oh, now Perenolde would learn regret, Lothar thought, hazy and grim and glad. Now he would begin to grasp the true breadth of the error he'd made, that he couldn't commit such an offense against envoys of Stormwind without paying dearly for it—

And then Khadgar lifted his head and looked across the dungeon cell toward Lothar; and Lothar's heart froze in him.

"No," he heard himself say. "_No_."

For Khadgar's eyes were bright in the dark, a vivid steady green.

Khadgar smiled at him, warm, and snapped his fingers, spread his hand; light sparked softly there, hovering over his open palm, and it too was green.

Brilliantly, unmistakably.

"Khadgar," Lothar said, unsteady. "Khadgar, please. Please, listen to me. You must listen to me—"

Khadgar tilted his head. "Must I," he murmured, and it was _almost_ right, the sort of thing Khadgar had said to him many times before, but—absently, without rancor, as he bent lower over his books and kept on ignoring the papers Lothar had brought to him or a tray of food going stone-cold beside him. Not like this: not with this terrible satisfaction, smug and yet perhaps also a little pitying round the edges.

"Khadgar, hear me. Hear me and remember yourself," Lothar pleaded.

And Khadgar smiled at him wider still, and knelt down beside him, and touched him; and he burned.

He would have screamed, but the breath was pressed from him by the pain, there was none left for it. He made an awful sound between his clenched teeth, and writhed against the wall, mindless, trying to claw free of it. But it was—it engulfed him, green flame catching him alight as though his skin were tinder. His skin, his clothes, his _hair_; and the agony was white-hot in him, but some part of him remained aware that he could _smell_ himself, nauseating, meat and ash, even as he was seared deeper—

"A bit much, perhaps," Khadgar said mildly, and trailed his fingers along Lothar's raw blistered shoulder; and the fire dimmed and died, all at once, Lothar's vision no longer awash with flickering leaping green.

He squeezed his eyes shut, throat working—and even that hurt. He'd hoped dimly that it might have been illusion, but if it was, Khadgar maintained it: the burns remained even without the fire, and the pain likewise. The metal of Lothar's chains was hot against his wrists, his ankles, sizzling against his quivering skin, and he was—he _stuck_ here and there to the stone behind him, he could feel it. He wanted dizzily to vomit, but that would probably hurt even more. And Khadgar—

Khadgar would remember it, he thought dimly. Khadgar would remember it, after, when the Fel had been cast out of him again. He'd remember, and he'd be upset about it.

It wasn't that bad, Lothar decided, eyes still wrenched closed, breathing in shallow puffs against the stone of the wall. It wasn't that bad. He'd live. Ridiculous to make a fuss over it.

"You see," Khadgar was saying, "apparently they think they can still get some sort of use out of you. Before the Horde comes to retrieve us both, that is. Then I imagine you'll be killed, after the way you gutted that warchief of theirs. So I'm not to do it—they'll want that satisfaction for themselves."

"Khadgar," Lothar gasped out, blinking his wet eyes open.

Khadgar leaned down, eyebrows raised inquiringly. "Yes?"

"Remember yourself," Lothar told him. "Come back."

Khadgar pursed his lips, looking irritated. "Is that all you're going to say?" he asked. "Because that's going to get old really, really fast."

He reached down, stroked across the width of Lothar's thumb with one fingertip—and beneath his touch Lothar felt the bone snap clean across, and cried out; closed his other fist tight and dug his nails into his raw and bleeding palm, because at least that was a different sort of hurt. At least he was in control of it.

"Khadgar, Khadgar, ah—"

"Come on. You aren't a fool," Khadgar said to him, mild, scolding. "You know what sorts of things they must be looking for. Taria. Her secrets, the things that matter to her, what she'll do if they back her into a corner. Stormwind, its fortifications. Troops, numbers. This doesn't have to be difficult, Anduin."

Lothar lay there, dazed, squinting up.

Something wasn't right.

"Khadgar," he said again, a breathless rasp, and he wasn't even saying it to Khadgar so much as to himself: tasting it, reminding himself of the feel of the name on his tongue, trying to understand what it was that nagged at him.

"Yes, that's right," Khadgar agreed gently. "They've freed me, that's all. I'm no longer bound by the limitations of small men in large towers, by the petty confines of this plane of being. The _power_—it's beyond your understanding, of course. But then so many things are."

And Lothar gazed up at him, and then laughed.

It was short, harsh. He choked on it, a little.

But he knew, now. He knew.

Whatever this was, it wasn't Khadgar.

It wasn't right, none of it—and not because of the influence of the Fel, but because it wasn't Khadgar at all. The way it spoke to him, the way it said his name; _Anduin_, of all things, when Khadgar had only ever called him Lothar, and knew well that it was Taria alone who called him by any other name, these days—who surely wouldn't come to him now seeking to speak to him like a _sister_. Who sought power, yes, but in the form of knowledge. Who'd stepped into a fountain that brimmed over with the Fel, and had burned it clean and looked at Lothar with his own dark eyes after.

He'd told Lothar later, a hushed whisper in the newly empty halls of Karazhan, about the presence that had spoken to him, within the artifact of the Kirin Tor—about where that great and terrible light had come from, within him, even as he burned with the Fel, such that he'd swept it from him utterly. From himself and from the font and from Medivh likewise, and that even though it had worked its foul corruption upon Medivh across years and years. There _was_ no greater power the Fel could give him than that he already possessed, and he knew it well. He couldn't have been tempted by it; and surely it couldn't have been forced upon him, not when he'd proven already he could drive it from his presence with an effort of his will alone.

And he knew Taria, he knew Stormwind. Half these questions were things he'd already have given up the answers to, had the Fel wormed its way within his mind—the knowledge would've been there for the taking.

Lothar let his eyes fall shut, and smiled. So they must not have broken Khadgar, not yet.

But where was he? Where did they have him? What did they mean to do to him? Lothar swallowed, and felt the smile slide away. Was he—was he—did he even now face what he might think to be Lothar? A Lothar who looked upon him with shining green eyes, and smiled at him, and would set _him_ on fire and then break his fingers one by one? Surely not. Surely with his powers he could easily prevent it; surely he wouldn't be so foolhardy as to refrain from raising a hand against Lothar if Lothar were hurting him—

Because of course Khadgar was never foolhardy, Lothar thought acidly, squeezing his eyes shut tighter.

But Alterac had never been a large kingdom, nor a strong one, whether measured by might of arms or by magery. And no doubt Perenolde did mean to turn Lothar and Khadgar over to Gul'dan—that wasn't an unlikely price for him to have agreed to pay in return for Alterais security from the Horde. He was a cautious man, and thoughtful; it would appeal to him to strike a bargain where he could, and to believe he'd done wisely by it. He wouldn't understand that there was no such thing as peace with the Horde.

But never mind: the point was, the Horde hadn't come to collect, not yet, or Lothar would already have been dragged out of this dungeon and killed. This creation, this—simulacrum, must be the work of one of Perenolde's own people, even if they drew upon the Fel to do it. And there was a chance, however small, that it couldn't be done lightly. That this thing that wasn't Khadgar required a great deal of focused will and attention—that they couldn't torment Khadgar with a second one at the same time, but must finish with Lothar first and let this one be unmade before they could construct another.

A chance. The only chance Lothar had, the only possible aid he could render Khadgar like this. Because it was Khadgar's powers, not Lothar and his lone sword arm, that were likeliest to get either of them out of here alive; because it was Khadgar, _Khadgar_, infuriating brilliant Khadgar in all his hidden might and earnest wide-eyed bravery, who was—

Who was—profoundly, profoundly and undeniably, a truth so obvious Lothar felt it down to his bones—invaluable. Invaluable, beyond all hope of measurement, and utterly irreplaceable.

And Lothar mustn't fail him. He mustn't fail. Not this time.

"—aren't listening to me at all, are you?" the thing that wasn't Khadgar said idly, and struck him. Full across the width of one cheek, half-seared, so that the world went white behind Lothar's eyes, the pain of the burn flaring bright.

Lothar choked, and gasped, and dug his teeth hard into his lip.

Time. That was the thing he could give Khadgar, the only thing left. Whatever it was the thing that wasn't Khadgar meant to do to him, he couldn't give in to it, and he couldn't die. He must give Khadgar as much time as he was able.

"Taria," said the thing that wasn't Khadgar, more sharply. "Come, be reasonable. Tell me about Taria."

Lothar breathed deep, and made himself look up, and grinned—though the burns that licked up his cheek stung deep as the motion pulled at them. "Well," he rasped, "she herself has said to me before, to remember this above all: this, if anything—"

"Yes?" pressed the thing that wasn't Khadgar, leaning down closer.

"She doesn't like peas," Lothar said.

And the thing that wasn't Khadgar pressed its mouth into a flat line, and reached down, pressed its fingertips to the back of Lothar's hand, and obediently half the bones in that hand snapped themselves at once.

It went on for a long time.

Or at least it felt like a long time. Lothar hoped, whenever he found himself possessed of the presence of mind to hope, that it was a long time.

But, in truth, it was hard to be sure. The pain swallowed him up; he remembered, dimly, the feeling of having been estranged from his body while drugged, and the way it had troubled him, that he should rely so thoroughly on the physical and have it wrenched from him that way. But now? Now it was a shell, a cage, a prison. It enclosed him, he could not escape it. It _hurt_, mindless and animal, and he could do nothing but hurt with it, trapped there within the flesh of it as he was.

The thing that wasn't Khadgar didn't lack for imagination. It broke his bones only a few at a time, so the throbbing symphony of their agony built slowly, slowly, to a great crescendo. And in between—

In between, it did what it would with him, and he hung on grimly and did his best not to die of it.

It burned him some more, its palm white-hot, sparking green: his face, and the soles of his feet, the base of his throat and the crooks of his elbows. It touched him, and his skin split itself open along curving lines of green light, flayed itself from him; the stone of the wall and floor, his chains, grew slick with blood. He thought dimly that it must be too much blood, that he couldn't lose any more and live. And of course he must not let it kill him so quickly—so he taunted the thing that wasn't Khadgar until it grew angry and set him on fire again, and by it cauterized the wounds.

He lay there writhing, screaming between his gritted teeth, clenching his jaw, his broken hands wracked by spasms that made the agony crest and break and crest again. But the tears that seeped from his hot stinging eyes were at least half triumph. Because he was still alive, still alive to _feel_ his blood pooling beneath him, still alive to weep over the sick grating of the ends of his shattered bones against each other. And the longer he lasted, the better.

He was dragged deep into himself. The pain was all there was. He could no longer remember where he was, or why it was so important that with each beat of his heart, each breath he gasped in through his seared and aching throat, a little more time passed. There was the hurt, and there was the thing that wasn't Khadgar—wasn't, but nearly was, and by now only one of Lothar's eyes would open properly, but still he found himself gazing helplessly up into that familiar face, desperate to pretend for an instant here and there that seeing it meant Khadgar yet lived.

Perhaps it was Khadgar here with him after all. Perhaps that was why he must bear all this, and hold fast despite the soft dark he could feel encroaching upon him. Perhaps if he only did well enough, screamed loud enough, sobbed hard enough, Khadgar would be satisfied and relent, and stop _doing_ this to him—please, please, stop; anything—

"Oh, come now," Khadgar murmured to him, almost sweet, looking down at him where he lay so utterly sundered and touching the backs of two fingers to his bleeding broken face. "As if you'd give me the satisfaction, you piece of shit."

Lothar laughed, or tried to. He'd give Khadgar anything. Anything. So—this wasn't Khadgar, then. This wasn't Khadgar, or Lothar would already have done all that he asked and more.

Of course. That made sense of it. Lothar let his lone working eye fall shut again, dimly but wholly satisfied to have managed to work out the truth of the matter; and Khadgar—the thing that wasn't Khadgar—snarled an oath at him and kicked him hard, right where his ribs had already long since splintered. He cried out, a harsh wet sound, and tried to crawl away on the arm that wasn't broken yet, smearing blood across the floor, chains clanking.

And then the dungeon wall fell in.

Lothar was dizzied, blinded, by the brilliant wash of blue light; deafened by the rumbling and cracking of stone. There was wind, suddenly. Wind, blowing snow, fresh cool mountain air. He couldn't—couldn't understand what had happened, couldn't extract any meaning from it. He twisted his face away and then had to cough, grimaced at the taste of blood on his tongue and spat it weakly out as best he could, and what felt like at least half a tooth went with it. And then he let his head drop back against the floor. And it was like that, dazed and winded, aching, squinting sideways with his good eye, that at last he was able to pick out the shape of a figure, amidst all that light.

It was Khadgar.

It was Khadgar, and his eyes were shining blue, his robes whipping about him, blue light curling and spiraling round him, spilling from his palms and twining up his arms.

He saw—himself, first, the thing that wasn't him; his gaze fell upon it and his mouth twisted. And then he saw Lothar, lying blistered and bloodied, half-maimed. Probably near unrecognizable, Lothar thought, distantly and grimly amused; except by the look that came over Khadgar's face then, he knew Lothar on sight after all.

He didn't look away. The thing that wasn't Khadgar swore, and called up a great inferno of green light, and Khadgar didn't so much as spare it a glance. He reached out, and the blue light moved with him, spun out in a flare like a blossoming flower and wrapped itself in a glowing shell around the thing that wasn't Khadgar, and simply—unmade it, so that it tumbled apart into a shower of green sparks and was gone.

And for all that that blue light had just blown apart a wall of hewn stone blocks and then deconstructed the semblance of a man, it was—soft. Soft, warm, infinitely gentle, as it flowed over the floor and curled itself around Lothar, lifting him up, bearing him away.

Lothar became aware, briefly, that the dungeon was gone. That _he_ was gone, more accurately, for the dungeon no doubt remained where it had been—but he was outside of it.

He was, he discovered, outside of the keep entirely. And _that_ was because the keep was gone: half of it, or thereabouts. Blasted apart, stones toppled this way and that, and the rubble already showered with a dusting of snow. Lothar could hear distant shouting, a low roaring crackle that might have been flame.

Khadgar paid it no heed. Lothar couldn't rightly blame him; it felt very far away, somehow, as if the blue light that swirled round them held them both apart from it.

"Hush," Khadgar said, very soft. "Be still," and Lothar went away again.

They'd gone further. The snow had stopped. It was very quiet.

Lothar blinked, dimly bewildered. And then he realized both his eyelids had moved, when he did it—that the skin of the one was no longer stiff and crusted over, that the other was not swollen and seeping, and that bewildered him further still.

"Stop moving," Khadgar said, absent, chiding.

Lothar blinked again, and dared to wet his lips. That didn't hurt either.

Nothing did, he determined after a moment. He felt—warm. Warm, and very light; suspended, utterly without pain, amid a soft foamy lattice of glowing blue.

"Khadgar," he said.

And that too was a surprise, for it came out whole, comprehensible. A little hoarse, but that was all. His—his teeth all seemed to be there again, back in the right places. That probably helped.

"I'm not kidding," Khadgar snapped at him. "Hold still."

Lothar squinted at him. He looked all right. But that didn't mean nothing had happened—not when it was Khadgar, not when he could have put himself back together as readily as he was putting Lothar back together now.

"Did they send someone to you? Did they—was it—" Lothar choked on the words; he couldn't breathe. It felt suddenly and terribly urgent, and he didn't know why. As if it mattered now, when it was all over. And yet he couldn't stop himself. "—I'm—I'm sorry. I'm sorry if it was me, I didn't—I would never—"

Khadgar had turned his head and was staring at him. "_Lothar_," he said sharply, and then stopped and squeezed his eyes shut. "For all the—I'd have known, you idiot. It was magic. I'd have known, all right? Just—shut up."

So perhaps they'd let him be after all. Perhaps Lothar had been right to think they would, until they were done with Lothar himself.

But he had to be sure. He had to be _sure_.

He struggled up a little, just trying to lift himself away a bit from the glowing blue light that surrounded him—trying to clear his vision of it, so he could see Khadgar better past it. Khadgar swore at him and braced a hand against his chest, fingers sweeping his collarbone; and apparently that was whole too, Lothar discovered, and unbroken.

"Lothar! I promise you," Khadgar bit out, exasperated. "They didn't do a thing to me. All right? They shut me away, they wouldn't open the door or answer any of my questions. That's it."

"Shut you away," Lothar repeated belatedly. As if anyone could keep Khadgar on the wrong side of a closed door, if he wished to be elsewhere—

"They'd closed me in some sort of circle," Khadgar allowed. "There were these—stones. Crystals. I couldn't cast anything, I couldn't even write out a transportation. They drew all the magic away into themselves."

Lothar swallowed. Because of course Perenolde would have prepared in advance, knowing who it was he endeavored to hold, and that he must do it successfully until the Horde could come to collect—

"I got a bit frustrated," Khadgar said, a little sheepishly, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck, gaze flicking away from Lothar and then back. "I knew the stones had to be holding it somehow, they couldn't have just—" He made a speaking gesture with his free hand, suggestive of smoke dissipating. "So I went ahead and gave them some more. Filled them up."

Lothar peered up at him, and raised an eyebrow. "And then?"

"And then they exploded," Khadgar said. "And half the west tower with them, which I can't say I was particularly sorry about." He cleared his throat. "Once they were gone, it was—I could feel it. The Fel. I could feel it. So I went to see what they were doing with it."

"And took down half the keep while you were at it," Lothar observed dizzily, grinning at the memory; because it _was_ funny, now that he understood what he'd been seeing. Perenolde had wanted Khadgar, the Khadgar who'd stood within the raging heart of the Fel and borne it—and he'd gotten him, and might even have beaten the odds and survived the experience. "Lucky, I suppose, that they were holding me there and not beneath the furthest wing, hm?"

But Khadgar didn't laugh.

"It wouldn't have mattered," he said, very steadily, looking down at Lothar with an expression Lothar couldn't hope to name. "I'd have leveled it all, and the mountain besides."

Lothar blinked at him. He was—his eyes were wet; he didn't seem to have noticed. His jaw was clenched tight, his brow sharply furrowed, and he was looking at Lothar like he was just waiting for another stone wall to appear between them. Like he'd be ready to sunder it to rubble when it did.

"Khadgar," Lothar said, and reached for him.

Or—he meant to. It didn't quite work. His near arm was—was still broken, he realized dimly. It didn't hurt, whatever Khadgar had cast on him to prevent it still holding strong. But it felt very peculiar.

"I did tell you not to move," Khadgar said briskly, and blinked his eyes clear, and set a hand gently along the long broad bones of Lothar's forearm.

A prickle of tingling heat, and something shifted. Because of course it was that simple for Khadgar, Lothar thought, letting his eyes drift shut again. Of course. He should have known better than to worry, perhaps. It was only that—

"—everyone dies," he heard himself murmur, and was only then aware he'd been speaking aloud, and didn't know how long he'd been doing it.

"Well, yes," Khadgar said to him, absent: manipulating his hand, now, which felt strange and weak and bent much too readily in Khadgar's grasp, but didn't hurt either. "Yes, that's quite true. Well done."

Oh. He didn't understand.

"No," Lothar said blurrily. "No, it's—me, I—my wife."

Khadgar went very still.

Lothar swallowed once, twice, and squeezed his eyes shut tighter. It wouldn't matter, that Khadgar had borne all the pain in his body away; this would hurt anyway. But perhaps that was all right.

"Callan," he managed, and though it felt wrenched from him, scraped from his dry throat, it came out. "Llane, Medivh. Everyone I—" He stopped, and bit his mouth. "Everyone I ever wanted to keep safe. Everyone I ever meant to die for, if I had to. When it came time, when their need of me was direst, I—they all—they _all_—" He stopped again, though he hadn't meant to. He didn't know why.

But Khadgar was still touching his hand, his wrist. And Lothar felt it again, just as it had been in the moment he'd looked up, lying on that stone floor, and understood what he was seeing: that fierce glad relief, twisted up with desperate gratitude, abject and shameless thanksgiving.

He dug his teeth into his lip, and opened his eyes, and drank it in—Khadgar, right there, real and whole, untouched. Alive.

"But not you," he said unsteadily. "Not you."

And then he blinked, and frowned. Khadgar's eyes were wet again, his—his face. He looked agonized. He _had_ been hurt, Lothar decided dimly, damned liar that he was. He had been hurt, and hadn't said so—

"No, no, stop," Khadgar said, soft, and pressed him down, and held him there. "Stop, it's all right. I'm not hurt. Lothar—I'm not hurt. I'm fine." He spread his hand wide, thumb settling at the base of Lothar's throat; and it did feel strong, that hand, strong and steady. "You did well; you kept me safe. I'm fine."

"Damned liar," Lothar told him fuzzily. "Full of shit."

But Khadgar laughed a little, then. So perhaps he really was all right, Lothar thought; and his eyes fell shut again and this time he couldn't stop them. It was simply too dark, and too quiet, his heart too warm now that the worry had nearly all dissolved away. He slid a little further down, a little further. Fingers moved through his hair—so Khadgar had been kind enough to grow it back for him, then, instead of leaving it half burned away: that was the last dim thought that crossed his mind, and then he was gone.

He came around once, in sunlight; again, in the cool of evening. For a blurred span of moments, amid a rush of voices, sharp, concerned—he had half an impression of a vaulted hall, Taria's grim and determined face above him. And light, always that light: blue, brilliant. Khadgar.

By the time he was able to wake for true, and stand on his own two feet, the royal healers in the palace in Stormwind had already evaluated him.

And, apparently, he was—fine.

"Better than," the healer admitted, with a shake of her head. A woman, young, pale hair pinned back neatly, and Lothar suspected she'd been assigned the duty of telling him so because she was junior enough to have no one else to pass it to.

He had not, historically, proven himself an agreeable patient.

"You're the picture of health. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Less than nothing. If I didn't know better," she added pointedly, giving him a very level sort of look, "I'd say you'd followed a healer's advice every day of your life, and never left a wound untended."

"Well," Lothar murmured. "Isn't that something."

He didn't intend it as a jab, nothing like it; but Khadgar, against the far wall, shifted his weight anyway, and cleared his throat.

"Even this," the healer said, and reached for his elbow, brought it up and across his bare chest in a brisk and familiar motion—for this had been done to him many times, in an effort to strengthen him enough to bear the old sword wound that cleaved down his back, and Lothar grimaced in anticipation of the tightness, the dull pain, that always accompanied it.

And—nothing. He blinked, reached up with his free hand to grasp his elbow himself and draw it higher, closer. Nothing. His shoulder blade, the muscles of his back, moved freely and obeyed him, and not the slightest twinge came with that motion.

"It's as though it had never healed wrong at all," the healer was saying. "Remarkable."

"A spot of torture was just the thing," Lothar agreed, absent, moving his upper arm in a slow arc to test.

And then his eye was caught, for Khadgar had flinched.

He looked over. Khadgar wasn't looking back, but away, across the room; toward the unshuttered windows where sunlight streamed in, and yet Lothar felt certain he appreciated none of the view.

"Well," Lothar said aloud, to the healer. "Then I've no need for you, do I?"

"You certainly don't," she agreed coolly, "and rest assured I'm grateful for my good luck," and he couldn't help but grin at her then; she pointedly refused to smile back, but he thought perhaps her gaze warmed just a fraction.

She inclined her head to him, and then swept out, and they were alone.

Khadgar was silent, and still looking away. Neither, Lothar thought, a troubling fact in and of itself; a common enough state of affairs—except that this time there was no open book in front of him to complete the picture.

Lothar remained where he was, seated at the edge of the healers' cot where he'd been examined. He tilted his head, and idly kicked his bare feet a little, and watched Khadgar, and waited.

And he became aware that it felt strange that he should have to. That he must look all the way across the room, that Khadgar wasn't within reach. Since the moment Khadgar had come for him in Perenolde's keep, lifted him with such delicate and gentle spellcraft from the floor where he'd lain shattered—the memories were blurred, a haze, and yet amidst every one was that bright blue light, and Khadgar. Always by him, that long day and night it had taken to put him back together, and then warping them both safely to Stormwind, and then when the healers had come, and Taria.

But not now.

"All right, come on," Lothar said at last.

Khadgar startled, and his head came round, as though he'd only just realized the healer was gone.

"Come on," Lothar said again, and raised his eyebrows. "What is it? You might as well tell me. I won't give you a moment's peace until you do," he added mildly. "And neither will you, by the look of you."

Khadgar stared at him. He looked uncertain. _Uncertain_—Khadgar, who knew everything about everything, or else intended to learn it in short order; who did what he would with hardly a backward glance, and damn whatever might happen to be in his way.

"I," he said, and then, "you," and then he stopped and bit his lip. "You're all right, then," he finished at last, looking away again.

"Indeed I am," Lothar agreed slowly, frowning, watching him. "For someone who'd never trained in the art of healing, it seems you did a magnificent job of it."

And that, for some reason, made Khadgar turn to him again—sudden, intent, jaw working. "A magnificent job," he repeated, soft and very level, and huffed the barest breath of a laugh through his nose, though it was obvious he wasn't amused in the least. He shook his head, rubbed at his mouth, and through all of it stayed right where he was: against the far wall, the distance between them about as great as it could be without Khadgar standing in the hall instead.

"Khadgar," Lothar said, abruptly uneasy.

But Khadgar didn't let him finish. "I won't object," he said.

"How wonderful," Lothar said brightly. "And what exactly is it to which you mean to grant your cooperation so freely?"

"When you assign someone else to look after me," Khadgar told him, still so quiet and so even, as though it were self-evident. "I won't object. I won't make it difficult for you, I promise. I know I'm not—I haven't always been—but I won't make it difficult."

Lothar felt an uncertain clench in his gut, a moment's wrenching disorientation. _To look after me_; so Khadgar had noticed it, then, had become aware of Lothar's endless helpless attention. Or—had Lothar given himself away, rambling on, magic-drunk? _Everyone I ever wanted to keep safe. Everyone I ever meant to die for, if I had to—but not you._ Had Khadgar finished his work, brought them both back here, waited for Lothar to be examined properly; and, all the while, been thinking it all over, remembering Lothar about him all the time? Lothar always at his shoulder, Lothar's relentless firm insistence that if Khadgar must go to Alterac then it would be Lothar who went with him—

But no: _I won't make it difficult for you, I promise._ If he'd discerned it, the thing Lothar had meant never to tell him, then surely it would only be expected that he should smooth the way for Lothar to remove himself. What need for a promise?

It made no sense. So Lothar drew a breath and let it out, and bid his galloping heart calm itself. He was safe, and Khadgar had some other notion buzzing round that massive brain of his, and no doubt they could settle it easily enough if he could only get Khadgar to explain to him what the trouble was.

"You're the picture of consideration," he said to Khadgar aloud, and reached over easily for his shirt, to tug it back on now that the healers were finished with him. "And what exactly is it that makes you think I'm going to do that, hm?"

This last was muffled, the shirt passing over his face, but he had no doubt Khadgar would still be able to understand the words.

Except when he was done, shirt settled on his shoulders, tugging his hair absently free of the collar—by the look on Khadgar's face, he'd said it in the tongue of the Horde.

"You will," Khadgar burst out, white-faced. "You must. I saw it, you know I did. It was _me_. It was—surely you can't want—" He stopped short, as if choked by the words, and bit at his mouth again, harder. "I'm sorry, I should have left; I know I should have left. But I wanted to be certain that you were—"

Oh. _Oh_.

Lothar almost laughed, entirely without meaning to, and only just managed to swallow it down. Because of course it wasn't funny in the least, that Khadgar should have decided such a thing and should be pained by it; and yet it was nothing that had crossed Lothar's mind for even a moment, so far removed from all that had and so utterly bewildering as to be inevitably ludicrous to him.

"You're an idiot," Lothar said aloud, warmly, and stood: rose from the edge of the bed and crossed the room barefoot, one easy stride at a time. "Of course it wasn't you."

Khadgar had been watching his progress anxiously, looking as though he might at the next instant bolt for the door—but at this, his brow furrowed, his eyes clear and attentive: a puzzle that needed solving, enough to distract him for the moment from his distress. "What? But it was—it looked exactly like me. You must have thought—"

"I did," Lothar agreed, and something passed across Khadgar's face that made him hasten to add, "At first? Yes, I thought it was you. You, entrapped by the Fel. Khadgar, Medivh was _Guardian_; he had spent a lifetime devoted to the welfare of this realm, and the Fel and that demon-thing were still enough to make him open the way for the Horde. Of course it might have been you—consumed, taken over, acting entirely against your nature. And perhaps some would choose to blame you for such a thing, but I am not one of them."

Khadgar looked at him, and swallowed. "At first," he said. "And then?"

"Then?" Lothar shrugged. "It erred."

Khadgar bit his lip, and said nothing.

"Khadgar," Lothar said, more gently. "Either way—I knew full well it wasn't you who sought to hurt me. All right?"

"But I _did_," Khadgar said, because he was nothing if not endlessly stubborn at all the wrong times. "I did, or as good as. Doesn't that trouble you? How can you possibly—"

Lothar did laugh, then, but luckily Khadgar didn't take it too ill; only blinked at him in surprise, looking charmingly baffled. So Lothar let himself laugh again, and shook his head, and reached up to settle his hand on Khadgar's shoulder—a firm clap, so Khadgar couldn't think he was hesitant to be in arm's reach, to touch or be touched, and then he smoothed his thumb back and forth just a little, absent, soothing. "I'll dream of it," he admitted. "No help for that. But—"

He stopped, struggling to work out how to say it. How to explain this thing that was so obvious, and yet which Khadgar seemed not to grasp at all.

"But when I do," he tried at last, "it won't be what's done to me that is the nightmare. Understand?"

Khadgar didn't seem to, at first—and then, abruptly, did. He looked, Lothar couldn't help but think, as though he had been struck; and that wasn't what Lothar had intended in the least. Damn it all. He'd said it wrong, somehow—

"You are absolutely unbearable," Khadgar said, low, surprisingly steady.

And then he reached for Lothar's wrist just there by his shoulder—for _Lothar_, with the other hand, and with such grasping openhanded desperation that Lothar began to think he'd been wishing to all along, making himself stand here with his back to the wall so that he could be sure he wouldn't.

"Khadgar," Lothar said carefully, and then Khadgar kissed him.

It was a surprise, a great shocking surprise. Lothar startled in the face of it, involuntary, and sucked in a harsh unsteady breath against Khadgar's mouth, and—

And it had never occurred to him before to think that all that while he'd spent following Khadgar about like a hound desperate for a pat on the head, feeling daringly exposed by it at the same time that he hadn't been able to make himself stop—Khadgar, likewise, had _let_ him. Had never shied from him or tried to prise him free and leave him behind. Had never once asked him to go.

Lothar had thought—had thought he hadn't known, hadn't noticed. Would keep on not noticing, most likely, unless Lothar wrote it down in a book for him somewhere; and Lothar had even been grateful for it. He could carry on as he was, he'd thought, watching over Khadgar and feeling every idiot thing he pleased, and Khadgar none the wiser. Maybe it would hurt less, then, when he failed. Maybe just a little.

Because he would fail. Of course he would.

Everyone died.

Except this once, he hadn't failed. Except here was Khadgar, right here, warm and whole and indisputably alive. _You did well_, he'd said, there on the mountainside beneath the dark pines, fresh-fallen snow and bright blue light. _You kept me safe._ And perhaps all those days Lothar had spent circling him at a careful distance, drinking in all he could permit himself, wringing out all he could bear from every moment, and waiting to be sent away—perhaps Khadgar had been sitting there as still as he could, thinking that at any moment Lothar must remember there were far more important things to do than watch Khadgar read, and waiting to be left.

Something about that thought, the wistful bittersweetness of it, made it abruptly impossible not to act: not to make sure Khadgar understood the truth of the matter properly at last.

Lothar had only just drawn his shirt on, hadn't done the ties; Khadgar had caught the neck of it, the gaping-wide collar, with that one outstretched hand, knuckles digging into Lothar's bare chest. They were touching there, and where Khadgar's other hand curled round his wrist, and their mouths, their bumping chins, and nowhere else.

Well, Lothar thought dimly. That was easy to fix.

He leaned in, pressed Khadgar back against that lovely convenient wall and reached up belatedly to touch his face, to skim eager fingers into his hair.

And Khadgar had the nerve to make a sharp surprised sound. As if he hadn't started it—

"Lothar," he said, blank, breathless with kissing and being kissed.

"I changed my mind," Lothar told him, brushing a thumb along the curve of his cheek. "You're right. You're entirely right. You are to blame for everything bad that has ever happened to me; but luckily I think I know a way you can begin making it up to me."

Khadgar stared at him and wet his lips, and then began, very slowly, to smile.

"Do you," he murmured.

"Yes," Lothar said, "and I'll accept nothing less, if you ever wish to be forgiven for your trespasses."

And he expected Khadgar to smile some more. So he didn't know what to think, at first, when Khadgar's face grew sober again, and Khadgar looked at him searchingly for a long moment, and something strange and aching for which Lothar didn't know the word was there in Khadgar's eyes.

"I'll do my best, then," Khadgar said, soft and sweet and far too serious.

It made something clench tight in Lothar's chest, that seriousness; and he could do nothing with it but press closer still, and kiss Khadgar again.


End file.
